Samtel Color Ltd. Installs Barcode Tracking System

Samtel Color Ltd. recently installed a new barcode tracking system in their Ghaziabad facility in Northern India.

Using Allen-Bradley’s ControlLogix platform and ProSoft Technology’s interface modules, the new tracking system allows better monitoring of the entire manufacturing process.

Samtel Color Ltd. is the largest manufacturer of color picture tubes (CPTs) in India, commanding a marketshare of approximately 40% in their domestic market. Samtel sells their CPTs directly to manufacturers, including Samsung, LG, Thomson, Philips, BPL, Videocon, Onida and Panasonic.

“We manufacture the widest range of CPTs in India,” said Sunil Kakaria, CEO for Samtel Color.

Their Ghaziabad facility has a production capacity for manufacturing 3.2 million CPTs per year. Line one in the Ghaziabad facility manufactures 21” and 20” CPTs. Line two is dedicated to manufacturing 14” CPTs.

In order to raise their market share to 50% in the next three years, Kakaria wanted the company to have “more efficient capacity utilization and greater manufacturing efficiencies. Our mantra for success is to stay ahead of the competition using differentiation in products and services...We have taken many technological initiatives in order to improve our CPT market share.”

One of the ways Samtel found to help them improve their market share and increase the quality of their products was the implementation of a barcode tracking system in their Ghaziabad facility.

The plant was already equipped with Allen-Bradley’s ControlLogix platform containing a 1756-ADN card. Samtel installed over 100 barcode scanners communicating via the RS-485 network. ProSoft Technology’s MVI94-GSC modules were added to connect the ControlLogix system to the barcode scanners.

“Since the barcode scanners are ASCII devices, an interface was needed to allow the data collected by the scanners to be transmitted over an RS-485 network to the ControlLogix system,” said Lenus Hong, Regional Area Manager for ProSoft Technology, Inc. “The MVI94-GSC FLEX I/O modules were installed (a maximum of 15 scanners per GSC module) allowing the scanners to communicate over the backplane to the DeviceNet Adapter (Allen-Bradley’s 1794-ADN).”

“A ‘C’ application in the MVI94 module polls all of the scanners, reads the barcode ID and, using direct I/O instructions, writes to the ControlLogix PLC,” said Lalit Giani Krishnakumar, Project Implementation Manager. “The data collected via the barcode IDs is presented as Crystal reports to the Main Server using an Oracle database. This information has helped Samtel achieve better monitoring of the manufacturing process which translates into better quality products.”

In order to meet the emerging worldwide trend for super-flat CPTs, Samtel has already started working on the design and development of 21” super-flat tubes.

“By mid-2002, we will be ready to launch it in the domestic market. We are in the process of installing a new line for this purpose,” said Kakaria.

The new expansion will allow Samtel to increase its total capacity to over five million CPTs annually.

“The name Samtel is well-known among color television manufacturers,” said Kakaria. “In the next two to three years, we plan to make our presence felt in almost all major regions of the globe.”